Theatre
Michael Portillo - Pass master
Published 17 May 2004
Theatre - David Mamet's PC satire has not lost its power to shock. By Michael Portillo
Oleanna
Garrick Theatre, London WC2
David Mamet first shocked London audiences with Oleanna in 1993. The campaign of political cor-rectness sweeping US university campuses was big news. Newsweek magazine compared PC activists to the thought police in 1984. Mamet reflected this by depicting three meetings, spread over a few days, between John, a college teacher, and his student Carol. Audiences were split between taking her side and his, not necessarily according to gender, which sometimes led to noisy outbursts in the theatre. But many people felt less cer- tain, sharing Mamet's apparent ambivalence. Each of the two characters seemed to be sometimes right, and often wrong.
Returning to Oleanna, I tried to imagine how it would be if I were seeing it for the first time. The dialogue no longer quite convinces. Mamet is a brilliant mimic. In Sexual Perversity in Chicago (adapted for the screen as About Last Night), he perfectly captured the mating banter of twenty-somethings. In Glengarry Glen Ross, he faultlessly caught the whining tone of real-estate salesmen blaming their failure to close a deal on the lack of good leads. And in Oleanna, he captured the tone and vocabulary of American academia. A hallmark of Mamet's talent is that he observes how people communicate in incomplete sentences and how, by interrupting each other or starting to speak at the same time, they misunderstand. But this time his characters' incoherent exchanges struck me as exaggerated.
Oleanna has not lost its power to shock. The first act, when Carol visits John's office to receive bad news about her grades and tells him that she cannot understand his course, offers no hint of what is to come. There seems to be nothing untoward in John's kindly attitude. Far from appearing attracted to the undergraduate, he is having a crisis buying a house, and is at first too preoccupied taking telephone calls from his wife to focus on Carol's needs, much less to harass her sexually. None the less, by their second meeting she has brought charges against him, and by the third the accusations have mushroomed and John's career is doomed.
Nowadays, it perhaps seems surprising that when Carol bursts into tears in their first meeting, frustrated because she needs a pass grade, he puts an arm around her. Not many teachers would take that risk today. Indeed, they would not meet a female undergraduate alone, or at least they would leave the door open. But maybe that is because they have seen Oleanna.
Eleven years ago, I could appreciate the student's point of view. As she laid out her complaints against John, I was forced to recognise the sexist and elitist vocabulary that Mamet had skilfully buried in his conversation. His domineering manner was exploitative. Since then, I have moved from the right towards the centre of politics but, paradoxically, I can no longer see things her way. John is admittedly pompous. He enjoys the performance and the swagger of teaching. He has reached an age where, in order to appear cool to his students, he uses bad language and makes mildly risque reference to sex. Yet none of that merits the punishment he receives. Carol's furious note-taking, characteristic of a second-class mind, enables her to quote back his every word, but her PC definitions massacre the words' true meaning.
In the years since Oleanna premiered, we have encountered Monica Lewinsky and Rebecca Loos. Perhaps we are now more likely to suspect the young woman of being the exploiter. Does Carol invent a rape charge to exact just retribution against an appalling chauvinist, or is she enraged that John's wife and house preoccupy him more than her problems and charms? That interpretation comes to mind with Aaron Eckhart's excellent performance as John. At 36, he is younger than the script implies, and very attractive. Julia Stiles (from 10 Things I Hate About You and Mona Lisa Smile) is a good-looking but non-coquettish Carol. She moves smoothly from vulnerability to domination as she acquires power over John, threatening his marriage and livelihood. Carol believes she has rights but not responsibilities. She demands that John use simple words and refuses to learn a wider vocabulary. She is a poor student and a weak pawn manipulated by a PC college group, but she is quick-witted and articulate when defending her rights against John. Intriguingly, Stiles, despite the brilliance of her acting career, will return to her studies at Columbia after Oleanna.
The play throws up another question: what is the point of higher education? John speaks ironically about exams and grades. Presumably he means that the value of university is to be found in other things, such as the development of a questioning mind. Carol lacks any sense of irony and takes his remarks as an attack on her efforts to get ahead in life. Is there any point in trying to teach a degree course to Carol? Charles Clarke thinks so, but Mamet has his doubts.
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